U.S. Pat. No. 4,497,196 (which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety) describes a stamping and forming machine having one or more machine modules in side-by-side relationship. Each module has two tooling assemblies therein which are reciprocable towards and away from each other. The strip material is fed along a strip feed path which extends between the tooling assemblies and through the module so that stamping and forming operations are performed on the strip material in the module.
Machines of the type described in the above-identified U.S. patent offer several advantages over conventional stamping and forming machines of the type in which a conventional press is used in conjunction with a die assembly composed of a die shoe having the forming tooling therein. For example, each of the modules of the machine (if more than one) contains tooling for performing only one or two operations on the strip material and the tooling assemblies are of relatively simple construction so that there is no necessity to produce a complicated and extremely expensive die assembly as with prior art stamping and forming machines. An advantage is also achieved by virtue of the fact that both of the tooling assemblies in each module are moved towards and away from each other and the machines are thereby dynamically balanced. The stroke of the tooling assemblies can be relatively short, as compared with prior art stamping presses, and the power requirements are thereby reduced. The amount of noise produced by stamping and forming machines in accordance with the above-identified U.S. patent is also much lower than that produced by conventional stamping machines.
The present invention is directed to the achievement of an improved stamping and forming machine of the general type described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,497,196 which can, if desired, be more compact than machines of the type described in the patent. The invention is further directed to the achievement of a machine which can be produced at reduced cost and which can be used to advantage under circumstances where relatively simple operations are being performed on relatively thin strip material, for example, simple blanking operations or simple forming operations which do not require a large capacity machine.